Staff: Mentor

hydraulics are behind the movement of many mechanical arms and levers, e.g., ditch diggers, elevators, car brakes, jacks
pneumatics is good for lower-powered but faster acting arms and levers, e.g., air brakes, industrial robots
springs power the movement in older clocks and watches and parking meters
(wind moves sailing vessels and turns windmills)

In the most general sense, I think when you say "motion" you probably mean work. In this case, work is defined as a force acting over a distance, W=F*d. The units for this are Joules, which is the fundamental unit of energy. According to several laws of thermo. energy cannot be created or destroyed, only exchanged. So by these definitions, all motion is transferred, and none of it is "generated".

Right, but all motion is is the change of position w.r.t. time. Since we're talking about methods of generating motion in the engineering forum, than we have to inherently talk about forces being applied over distances.

So if we're talking about work (or power) than we can break down the types of power sources. These power sources are the "fundamental methods of generating motion". As far as I can tell, we essentially know about every type of power source (I guess except for some futuristic quantum mechanical source).

These things you're talking about; engines, mechanisms, motors, and I can include machines, all have well defined definitions.

Hydraulic motors convert pressure into torque. That makes it to be defined as an actuator, and an actuator is a mechanism. A pump by this logic, is also a mechanism.

I guess to contribute to the thread, nuclear power I think is pretty fundamental. Geothermal sources, which is just simply fluid pressure from a temperature gradient from gravity.